Thursday, 27 September 2007

To an observer from Mars, they would not be thinking amiss if they thought that Africa was cursed with people in authority who have no inkling of their responsibilities.

One such set of people in authority are those who derive their status from being proponents of religions ever so foreign to Africa but become part of the fabric of our societies.

The traditional rulers and healers who are the bastions of our historical and cultural heritage have now been demonised or subsumed into these religious political establishments that their erstwhile incumbency authority counts for nothing anymore.

They also have their faults, but this is not the forum to explore their failures.

The Origin of AIDS suspect

Critical analysis still leaves us a bit unsure of how HIV/AIDS ravaged the whole swathe of Sub-Saharan African through all the generations, because, it cannot have been people copulating with the Simian species but some conspiracies point to a major vaccination campaign that might have used contaminated agents – truth or not, that impression has stuck.

It then informs the way certain religious leaders admonished their followers to refuse polio vaccinations in Northern Nigeria stemming from a case where Pfizer had allegedly tested illegal drugs on children, some of which lead to deaths and disabilities.

This makes any offer of Western expertise to alleviate African problems a bitter pill to swallow because the question of trust is compromised with the history of Trojan Horse gifts that are offered in false sincerity for ulterior gains.

Outrageous baseless claims

This however does not excuse the claim made by the Catholic Archbishop of Mozambique where the church has failed to depress the sexuality and sexual energy of the people with Abstinence and Be-faithful but never use Condoms by claiming condoms are laced with HIV.

It is quite sad when supposedly knowledgeable leaders of society express such blatant ignorance and false assertions to excite hysteria in order to achieve an end when objective discussion has failed to yield the desired result.

Now, when it comes to planned parenthood or the management of sexually transmitted diseases, the Catholic Church cannot be said to have been the most help or responsible in understanding the demographics or attitudes of their laity.

In fact, one supposes the Church sees it fit to demand people abstain or be celibate since the priests never get to enjoy the joys of homo-sapiens-sapiens copulation – no fault of anyone because it is not doctrine; it is a rule of men.

Irresponsible behaviour

The greater dereliction of responsibility is in not realising that the weakness of human beings of sexual fulfilment has to be understand and catered for, in which case, if you cannot abstain from sex or be faithful to your partner (who could also be infected), use condoms.

The further issue here is to deprive those who are infected from enjoying sex if they decide to use protection because not everyone who has been infected acquired the infection through sexual contact.

The express stupidity of the archbishop is glaring from the fact that it is quite far-fetched that the HIV virus is conserved in condoms for the purpose of wiping out Africans who deign to use sexual protection.

There is enough scientific study to prove that HIV does not survive that well outside the body and it would only survive in blood if the blood is stored in the right conditions of temperature and containment, I doubt if condoms and their packaging fit into that scope of preservation.

Religion as a detriment to progress

The means of scare-mongering and urban legends to the end of stopping people from using condoms in the light of a greater humanitarian tragedy is beneath contempt to say the least.

I would expect that every respectable, knowledgeable and intelligent person with a stake in Africa would roundly condemn the archbishop as he finds ways to retract his statement whilst his integrity and status is diminished.

We just cannot afford to have such idiots mouthing nonsense and endangering the lives of vulnerable people just because they derive authority from some unAfrican religious order.

Defrock the man before the Catholic Church is a symbol of disgrace – even that is debatable in the light of this.